Vincent Seifert wrote:

Woohoo!  Two series I've actually seen!  *cracks knuckles*  Ahem.

All comments strictly my opinion, and offered in good spirit.

    And always welcome. :)

{Nice teaser intro, just like CP's is.}

    All Corwin's work, I'm afraid, not mine. :p I'll forward your suggestions to him so he can address them.

{My shallow web-research on CP left me with the impression that the game
was halfway beween a dating sim and a fighting game... which conjures up
interesting images itself. :) }

    That's more baffling than what _I_ was able to discover, but interesting nonetheless.

{OK, this time cue indicates somewhere around Manga V.5, before the
appearances of Cologne, Mousse, Happosai, Ukyo, etc.}

    Right.

    Ranma sighed, and cursed his weird dream for the umpteenth time. Who were all those weird girls, anyway? Damn that dream for making him stammer! Damn his dream for causing him to think of all those beautiful girls after him! Damn that dream for making him think of Soun cross-dressing...

{I repeat, eek. :) Of course, we see that (more or less) much later in
the manga, so no imagination is required on our part... :) }

    Oh, Corwin has that picture availible, if anyone needs to see it... ;)

    Kurumi gave him a careful once-over that made the pigtailed boy feel strangely dirty. "Does not understand this one," she mumbled quietly to herself. "Yet time he has not." Turning towards Ranma, she called out to him as the cart started picking up speed, "Denial leads to delusion. Delusion leads to favoritism. Favoritism leads to bashing. Bashing leads to the Dark Side."

{ *nodnod*  :) }

    So far, everyone liked this bit the best. Mostly Corwin's, but this time I get to say I suggested part of it. Yey for me!

    "Damn," he muttered, turning. He wheeled in time to see a matronly woman with reddish hair nod at him in approval before melting into the crowd, a rushing tingle racing up his spine.

{Did she have a wrapped sword over her shoulder? :) }

    You know, she just might have!

    The first was a tall, lanky man in an ill-fitting multi-colored beret. The second was a much rounder man in a trench coat, glancing around furtively.

{You left out "obsessively wiping his face with a handkerchief". :) I
trust those two will be the same recurring encounters as in CP? Say, I
wonder if their names are Hiroshi and Daisuke? :) }

    Nope. Dur and Cor. And neither of them complusively wipe their faces. They're just stand-ins -- the REAL kageko come in later.

    The two men leaned forward ominously, the first muttering, "Brudda Cor, dis woman don wanna give us da ecchi!"

    "Meine freund Dur! What shall we do?"

{Hmm... I guessed wrong.  Who are these guys, then?  I can't place them.}

    Blatantly self-serving author avatars. We put the 'A' in 'ANC'!

    "Feh," the third voice continued, the speaker just coming into Ranma's point of view. "Dojinshi is like okonomiyaki -- it's got a proud tradition, and I'm not going to let your eagerness corrupt our enduring ethics!" Ranma blinked at the girl as he saw her. Long, brown hair in a pair of ponytails down her back, standing next to the banner that loudly proclaimed, "Kuonji!" in bold letters.

{ heh!  Ukyo/Yuu? }

    Yep!

    Her eyes lit up when she glanced at him, and she lunged across the table, pulling him over it and towards her. "Our brother here is a dangerous man," she warned, tapping the table with a large steel spatula for emphasis. "Feared the world over for..."

{ The pen is mightier than the spatula, is it not?  :) }

    Ah, but wait until chapter two, when we find out who set her on the Way of the Dojin...

    "Our dojinshi!" Ukyou responded, blushing even more deeply.

{ O_o  Ara maa. And she has a heck of an imagination...}

    Yes she does.

    "What the heck's a dojinshi?" Ranma mumbled, eyeing the cover of the book in his hands. An oddly well drawn rendering of himself stood on the cover, in a grossly exaggerated bishonen pose, the same girl he was talking to draped over his picture-self's arm. "Kinda cool," he admitted, flipping it open. "It's just like me, I guess." Though he didn't bother mentioning that she had misspelled 'Martial Arts' as 'Marital Arts' on the cover...

{ er... that's not a misspelling, is it.  :) }

    Nope. And thanks to the fanfic with the same title, we get to make an in-joke, too. (Just like Comic Party, and let me tell you -- Corwin's much better at squeezing them in than me -- it's not as easy as you'd think!)

    The first pages were kind of lacking, reminding him of Akane's manga, which bored him to death.

{Akane's manga? I thought she was Mizuki's alter-ego, the disdainer of
all things dojinshi...}

    And keeping some of the original characters, too. But in truth, rare is the child who doesn't have at least a few manga... And if that's not true, well then, it SHOULD be!

    Sparing a questioning glance to the girl, he turned back to the manga. Where the buildings and backgrounds were only indicated with a quick brushstroke or two, granting them an inconsequential feel, the girl and her clothes -- especially as they were being torn into ribbons -- had been paid a lot more attention. Ranma shivered, so

{suggest} shivered; so

    Good call. Will change. :)

    He flipped to the next page nervously, as the girl screamed and covered herself with what scraps and shreds of her clothing remained, and a full-page illustration of his picture-self jumped in the way, dispatching the thugs with a single blow. He couldn't help but smile at that part -- he got to be the hero in his own manga!

{Yeah, I can see how that would appeal to him.  :) }

    The best I could manage, I'm afraid. >_<

    Continuing on, he watched the picture-girl throw herself onto the picture-Ranma, thanking him and telling him in no uncertain terms that her body was his to do with as he pleased. Ranma stared at that panel for a very long moment, before flipping to the next page. He managed to raise his face and stare at the girl across from him levelly before his eyes rolled up and he passed out, a faint trickle of blood issuing from his nose.

{hehehe!}

    The Ecchi is strong within him. TOO strong, maybe. :p

    Muscling her way through the crowds, upset, confused, lost, and more than a little bit hungry, Akane wondered if she were moving in a large circle. The raving otaku gave her no more attention that the

than the

    Ack... thanks. :p

rare passing grope, and she simply couldn't move through the mass of bodies quickly enough to retaliate.

{ah, I was wondering.}

    Had to happen.

    Something broke through the gloom she was slowly accumulating, as the public announcement system blared, "Tofu-sensei to the first aid booth, please. Tofu-sensei to the first aid booth, please."

{ Of course. But if Minami, the organizer, has the same effect on him as
Kasumi (and she sure ought to, they even have the same voice), then...
oh my.}

    Let's say that she and Kasumi have a lot in common... but not quite that much. :)

    Akane blinked, staring in surprise. Tofu? Here? Well, he was a doctor, nothing like the otaku that surrounded her -- but if she could find him, then he could lead her to the exit, and from there, escape from the wretched hive of ecchi and perversion that had trapped her! Were she to have her way with things, she'd never see such a thing again.

{Don't say "have your way with things" here, Akane, they'll get the
wrong idea entirely... :) }

    Thank you. :p

    As she watched, a woman in a pristine white Kimono stepped before her, somehow creating a rift in the crowd, a bubble of personal space that the otaku seemed to be completely oblivious of, despite the woman's presence in their midst.

{Who?}

    Two hints: Red hair and wrapped parcel (both mentioned earlier, if you know where to look... ;)

{Happosai? This paragraph is opaque; I can only hope that it will be
clarified by later events. }

    Well, I'll make it obvious that it's not Happosai, at least.

    Catching himself, and turning to steady her, Tofu exclaimed in

himself and {comma}

    Right.

    Akane knelt on the floor, trying to help the doctor collect his comics. "Are these yours?" she asked worriedly. "'Housewife on the Rampage'? 'House Call'? 'Betty Does the Med School'..."

{heheheh!}

    ^_^;;; Corwin's idea.

    "Yep," she announced, beaming at him. "And don't you forget, you _are_ my fiancee."

fiance." {Akane's not going ballistic at this? }

    She's a little dazed.

    "Yep! Your father engaged us, and I decided to sell dojinshi about us to educate the world about our love!"

{ Makes sense to me... :) }

    Makes more sense when you know who her teacher was.

    Tofu flipped through the manga, and Akane peeked over his shoulder to study it. She looked away again, very quickly. The artist had done a reasonable job of guessing what Ranma looked like, to have drawn him naked in that much detail.

{ Thinks the girl with first-hand knowledge.  :) }

    Bingo. :)

The doctor made a thoughtful noise, and

noise and {comma}

    Right.

    The other girl's eyes widened, as Ranma sat up, staring at his feet.

widened as {comma}

    I tend to abuse them, don't I? ^_^;;

    Errata:

    E-mail me at the address above, and Corwin here: ely7@inter.net.il

"Brothers^H" being you and Corwin, I take it?  If so, you might want to
say so in the author credit.

    And Ginrai, though he's not part of this project. I don't know how the actual author line got lost... >_<

    Or visit his website here: http://corwin.anifics.com

A fun read.

    Glad you liked it!

I'm guessing that the Ranma characters who haven't shown up in the Ranma
manga before Shampoo's departure will be fused with their CP "equivalents"
(and vice-versa, in some cases) according to some system weighted more for
humor than consistency.  :)  So far I recognize:

    Always in the interest of humor. Always. :)

Ranma = Kazuki
Akane = Mizuki
Happosai = Taishi
Kurumi = Chisa
Ukyo = Yuu

and I'd like to suggest
Kasumi = Minami (in other words, Kasumi has a secret hobby of organizing
 dojin conventions)

    'Fraid that role's already been decided... ;)

I'm looking forward to seeing who gets Eimi's role of Ukyo's arch-enemy
(Kodachi, maybe? Her personality's about right, and I'd like to see her
get more than a cameo); also Aya and Reiko.

    Could be!

Thanks for writing and sharing!

    Well, glad you liked it and thank you again, for your feedback!

Vince Seifert    Fanfic Analyst   FFIRC Frog
Prime:  seifertv@csus.edu
Backup: seifertv@myrealbox.com
Techie: http://webpages.csus.edu/~seifertv/
Fanfic: http://www.csus.edu/indiv/s/seifertv/toth/
Ideas are worth their weight in gold.